Losing (Any) Religion

American fad and fashion supposedly starts on the West coast and sweeps East. I hope this one, reported Wednesday by Reuters, remains confined to its origin:

A California teacher has been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God -- including the Declaration of Independence.

Steven Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek School in the San Francisco Bay area suburb of Cupertino, sued for discrimination on Monday, claiming he had been singled out for censorship by principal Patricia Vidmar because he is a Christian. . .

Vidmar could not be reached for comment on the lawsuit, which was filed on Monday in U.S. District Court in San Jose and claims violations of Williams rights to free speech under the First Amendment.

Phyllis Vogel, assistant superintendent for Cupertino Unified School District, said the lawsuit had been forwarded to a staff attorney. She declined to comment further.

Williams asserts in the lawsuit that since May he has been required to submit all of his lesson plans and supplemental handouts to Vidmar for approval, and that the principal will not permit him to use any that contain references to God or Christianity.

Among the materials she has rejected, according to Williams, are excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, George Washington's journal, John Adams' diary, Samuel Adams' "The Rights of the Colonists" and William Penn's "The Frame of Government of Pennsylvania."

"He hands out a lot of material and perhaps 5 to 10 percent refers to God and Christianity because that's what the founders wrote," said Thompson, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, which advocates for religious freedom. "The principal seems to be systematically censoring material that refers to Christianity and it is pure discrimination."

Four thoughts:

• Context is important. Was Williams teaching American history or religion? Was he educating or preaching? It's possible he's a zealot seeking a judicial test case.



• The First Amendment forbids the government from establishing a religion or preventing the free exercise of any religion. The mere mention of God in a public school does not violate either right. Nor is it unlawful to teach the truth--that America's founders were religious men and their religion was Christianity. The exclusion of religion from the public sphere has fostered an entire generation of leftists as ignorant as Stephen Teti, whose letter to the New York Times asserted the founders were "secular humanists!" As Worldnet Daily hints, this is akin to arguing that the Constitution is unconstitutional because, for example, it embodies the Christian day of rest--Sunday--see Article I, Section 7, clause 2--and mentions the "Lord"--see Article VII.
  
  Rightpundit thinks court review is unavoidable:

  [T]he problem is that the ACLU and other radical leftist organizations will sue over the least reference to God and religion. Thus, school boards will err on the side of excluding materials that reference God or religion in order to avoid the cost of litigation. Even if they believe a court would eventually allow the materials, they would rather not spend the tens of thousands of dollars of attorneys’ fees it would take to defend the matter in court. Given that every school board believes it is underfunded, the last thing they want to do is spend money on attorneys instead of administrators, uh, I mean students.
  
  Thus, unfortunately lawsuits have become the only way for conscienous teachers and parents to force school administrators to actually teach history the way it happened instead of some version sanitized of all references to the religious beliefs of historical figures. It is a shame that something so basic has to be resolved in the courthouse.

• I hope Rightpundit's wrong. It's a principal's job--in the first instance, with school board supervision--to review, and approve, teaching materials. That's not necessarily censorship. And, absent a violation of procedural rights (see Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589 (1967)), a teacher shouldn't be afforded the ability to seek review of his superior's supervision in court, as recognized in Regents of University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214, 226 (1985):

  If a "federal court is not the appropriate forum in which to review the multitude of personnel decisions that are made daily by public agencies," Bishop v. Wood, 426 U.S. 341, 349 (1976), far less is it suited to evaluate the substance of the multitude of academic decisions that are made daily by faculty members of public educational institutions - decisions that require "an expert evaluation of cumulative information and [are] not readily adapted to the procedural tools of judicial or administrative decisionmaking." Board of Curators, Univ. of Mo. v. Horowitz, 435 U.S., at 89-90.

• Discrimination against Christians, and Christianity, is endemic. Only last year, a Federal District Judge in California upheld a curriculum requiring seventh graders "to adopt Muslim names and pray to Allah as part of a history and geography class," reasoning this "is just teaching them about the Muslim religion." This is, of course, exactly what Williams says his principal forbade. So there's a phony double standard, says Richard Thompson, chief counsel for a Christian rights organization:

  While public schools prohibit Christian students from reading the Bible, praying, displaying the Ten Commandments, and even mentioning the word "God," students in California are being indoctrinated into the religion of Islam. Public schools would never tolerate teaching Christianity in this way. Just imagine the ACLU’s outcry if students were told that they had to pray the Lord's Prayer, memorize the Ten Commandments, use such phrases as "Jesus is the Messiah," and fast during Lent.

Conclusion: Our public schools are supposed to educate, not promulgate falsehoods. Neither religion in general, nor Christianity in particular, can be excised from schools without multiplying the ignorance and prejudice exhibited by people like Stephen Teti. Yet, opening the decisions of school administrators to judicial review would be a nightmare. On that path lies school bussing. . .

I hope Mr. Williams' suit is dismissed. At the same time, I hope the school board, and the local community, carefully review the facts and, if the principal has been unprincipled, reverse the decision. That's what politics, and parents, do best.

More:

RightPundit responds. He recognizes community involvement is preferable to lawsuits, but accepts judicial review as a last resort. It's not unreasonable, but it lacks a bright-line test. Either decisions of school principals are reviewable or not. I say not. And that would preclude ACLU suits as well. If a parent objects to school policy, they can move or choose private school.

Based on the facts so far (California Yankee has a good round-up of blogosphere reactions), I think the teacher's correct. But the Constitution simply does not authorize un-elected Federal judges to review decisions of public school administrators. And there's no limit to the mischief the judiciary could do if allowed. If parents disagree with the decision, they can fire the administrator responsible. Of the two principles at stake, protecting the principal is the more important.